At least the Danes know how to count

Even though Danish is impossible for me to pronounce, I do appreciate their stubborn resistance to decimalization. The number 71 is (I hope I get this right) "en og halvfjerdsindstyve", literally, "one and half-four-times-twenty", or more commonly, just "en og halvfjerds". (Those familiar with other Germanic languages recognize "half-four" as meaning "three and a half".)

(I hope the Danes out there realize that my previous remarks about Danish were all in fun. I'm just fascinated with languages, especially those in the Germanic branch.)

Yeah, half four in Swedish would mean 3:30 (because you’re half-way to 4 from 3), but we only use it when talking about time (unlike the Danes). Half four in Irish sounds like an abbreviation for half past four.

After studying some East-Asian languages (Thai and Chinese), the simplicity in just saying 10-5 (for 15) or 5-10 (for 50) makes me want to use it in Swedish and English as well.

I remember some years back it was said that the Chinese students were so much better at maths (than westerners) just because the counting system was easier. I wonder if that makes the Danes even worse at maths?

is a very old way of saying numbers in Denmark and is most often used in trading – especially when you want to ‘stress’ the value.

When we need to be correct with number saying (on checks for instance) we use the other ‘way’: syvtien (syv-ti-en -> seven-ten-one).

In every day tongue we use the common way: ‘en og halvfjerds’.

This is of course common Danish (Rigsdansk) – if you venture into the countryside you will encounter other systems. Even though we are only a little over 5 million in population, and span nothing more than a bread crumb on a world map, we still have dialects used everyday, which are quite impossible to understand for non-dialected Danes. If we were to have a general vote on the subject, I think most younger Danes would just as much scrap the language and use English instead.

The etymology of "halvfjerdsindstyve" (halvfjerde sinds tyve) is fairly specialized knowledge, and while "halvfjerdsindstyve" may not be completely dead yet, it is clearly being replaced with "halvfjerds".

Both "halvfjerde" (three and a half) and "sinds" (times) on their own are long dead in contemporary Danish.

> People commonly read the numbers from left to right like "five oh" for 50 and "one five" for 15 in English.

Fifteen is hardly intuitive (5-10), besides in English fifty and fifteen sounds quite similar if you’re not used to the Germanic sounds. I mean it’s much more (mathematically) intuitive to say X (times) 10 (plus) Y.

"I remember some years back it was said that the Chinese students were so much better at maths (than westerners) just because the counting system was easier. I wonder if that makes the Danes even worse at maths?"

My vote goes to the first country to adopt duo-decimal <g> I’m sure learning math would be much easier in base 12, once you get past the ‘counting on your fingers’ stage. Probably too late for anyone to take the jump now though (although if we can teach reading through phonics…)

No, it’s not radically different, but different enough for one to get a better grasp on the relationship between the numbers. Besides it was a long time ago this was said (~15 yrs) and I may remember it incorrectly.

Well, speaking of Danes and counting there’s another funny point to make.

In English you have million (10^6) followed by billion (10^9) and then trillion (10^12) etc., but in Danish (and probably other languages) it is million (10^6), milliard (10^9), billion (10^12), billiard (10^15) etc. So in a way it is easier for us Danes to name really large numbers.

How would you say septilliard (10^45) in English? Of course you could always trump this by a googol or perhaps even the elusive fantasillion.

Often journalist and other people not interested in such mathematical details gets it completely wrong when translating big numbers from English to Danish. So if the US military budget is $400 billion ($4*10^11) they just use the same number in Danish increasing the budget figure to an even more insane number ($4*10^14).

Multipliers beyond (American) trillion have yet to appear in common usage. (But just wait a while; I’m sure our national debt will hit the next multiplier sooner or later.)

Nobody really uses the fancy words like "septillion"; the only people who commonly use numbers that large are scientists, who are content to use scientific notation.

I believe Britain switched from European "billion = 1 million million" to the American "billion = 1 thousand million".

Ironically, the current American system was based on the French system, and then the French changed their system to match the British, and now the British changed their system to match the Americans… Perhaps it’s time for the Americans to change to match the Germans?